Tag Archives: taxi issues

Thursday 16th April 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

…. since I had a really decent sleep? Just for once, after all this time, I finally managed to have a really profound sleep and it did me the World of good.

Not that it was early, though. Making tea took much longer than I imagined, and even though I enjoyed it, I had other things to do, for which I could make better use of my time.

By the time that I’d finished writing my notes, taking the stats, backing up the computer and all of that, it was just after 22:00 when I climbed into bed. As seems to be the case these days, it took a while to go off to sleep, but once I was gone, boy, was I gone?

There was one moment when I awoke, for what seems to be the obvious reason at the moment, but I was soon back in bed and asleep almost immediately. I’ve no idea what time it was, but the electric water heater was buzzing so it was certainly after midnight when I let it all hang out.

There was another awakening later, for the same reason, and I was debating whether or not to check the time to see if it was worth getting up permanently, but I was barely back in bed, tucked up under the covers, when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE made up my mind for me.

Considering that I’d only just gone back to bed, it took an age for me to leave it again, but after I’d finally managed to sort myself out in the bathroom, including a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went for my medication. In the interests of my weight, I eschewed the usual 200 ml of hot drink and just washed everything down with a small mouthful of orange juice.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, but to my dismay, I had nothing on. It must have been a really deep sleep, I reckon. So instead, I found a few other things to do.

Isabelle the Nurse came in as usual to sort me out. She was chatting away about not very much at all, and after she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re in the countryside discussing Roman villas, and apart from a few more “Richard of Cirencester” moments, he’s managed to steer pretty well clear of controversy. But while he was being led up the garden path by the aforementioned, we were being led through the sewers of Lincoln by the archaeologist Charles Roach Smith, who had apparently crawled through them in the past and whose notes were being quoted by our author.

Back in here, I had a few more things to do and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm, which came from I know not where, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started at the end of yesterday. And now, all of the music is reformatted, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even written a few notes. I can finish the rest tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner was late today so she didn’t have much time to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was quite early today and caught me in flagrante delicto with a frozen curry that I’d just taken out of the freezer in the bathroom. I just had to dump it on the worktop, hoping that it would melt quietly, rather than find a bowl for it.

The driver had never been here before, so she was parked across in the car park. Eventually she brought the car round to the entry and we could set off. We had another passenger to pick up at the Centre de Reeducation, but rather than a return to Avranches, from where he had come this morning, it was a return home, so we ended up driving around the obscure corners of Granville.

Nevertheless, at dialysis, I was somewhat early but I was still the last to arrive, so I was last to be connected, as usual.

And there were all kinds of problems there today. As far as I was concerned, they couldn’t make one of the auxillary machines work. Consequently, for about an hour and a half, I was surrounded by people trying to fix it, and I couldn’t do any work at all while they were there. And once again, I spilled some coffee onto the laptop. This time though, I was much quicker wiping it off.

Being the last to be connected, and with all of the other problems, I was last, as usual, to be unplugged. The taxi driver had been waiting a good fifteen minutes for me, so at least our departure was rapid enough, but I was still late home.

My cleaner helped me inside, and after she left, I made some rice and heated the curry that had been quietly melting on the worktop all afternoon, without leaking from its plastic bag, I’m pleased to say. It was delicious, as usual, and filling, so I once more eschewed my chocolate cake and home-made ice cream.

By now, though, it was late and I was totally whacked. I could hardly keep my eyes open. And so I just posted another terse note on my blog and went to bed. And that was that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about problems with machines … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of one of the old Andy Capp stories from the 1960s.
They were trying to bring into a building an IBM mainframe computer but it wouldn’t fit through the door. They had a pile of people around it making suggestions, and trying their best to help, but to no avail.
Eventually, Andy Capp shouted across to them "why not plug it in and let it work it out for itself?"

Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that Emilie the Cute Consultant still loves me. Or so she told me this afternoon at dialysis when she came to see me about the new medication.

The not-so-good news is that the pain in my foot is back after having been absent since Wednesday. I suppose that that’s the effect of this new medication wearing off since I took the last batch on Friday. I shall have to take some more tonight before going to bed.

Last night was rather a painless night, except that it was later than I wanted it to be, as usual. It was much closer to 23:00 when I finally crawled into my stinking pit after doing everything that needed doing.

And it was another really mixed night too, with moments of deep sleep followed by moments of turbulent tossing and turning, and so on. One thing for sure though was that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in one of the turbulent phases.

As usual, it took an age for me to sort myself out and head to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and what a miserable effort that was.

There was something about my brother going to convince someone else to do something but it was all extremely vague, and I didn’t remember anything more about it unfortunately

The last time that I changed my medication, the flow of dreams dried up for a while and it looks as if the same thing is happening right now. That’s a shame because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my dreams for my excitement. It’s the best that I can do these days.

So with some free time on my hands, I watched the highlights of Sunday’s game between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Y Barri. But there was nothing of any real interest in the match – none of these “let’s play it out from the back, lads” catastrophes that seem to liven up more than just a few of these games.

The nurse turned up as usual, still his cheerful self, no doubt due to the fact that he’s off on his week’s break this evening.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we were discussing the collapse of the Latin Empire in the Holy Land, and as usual, it makes dismal reading, all of these disputes amongst the Crusaders while the Moslem armies are gathering on their borders. How many times is this that the Europeans preferred to fight amongst themselves rather than make common cause against the “enemy”?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I spent an hour revising my Welsh, seeing as we have no course for the next two weeks.

There was even time to start the next radio programme, and I actually made some headway with it too.

My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was twenty minutes late. There were already two other people on board, but luckily, I was dropped off first.

We were early arriving and, luckily, I was seen to quite quickly. And then they left me alone for most of the session.

As I mentioned earlier, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She told me that the dry throat was a side effect of one of the medicaments that she had prescribed for me. And she assured me that she still loves me, which was really quite nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been worrying me for quite a while.

Being plugged in early was one thing. Being unplugged was quite another thing. When four people finish at the same time and there are only two nurses, it’s evident that someone will have to wait. And guess who drew the short straw?

Still, the taxi was waiting for me, but there was someone else to drop off and we became tangled up in roadworks. So it was just as late as it usually is.

My cleaner helped me back into the building, and after she left, I finished off my pizza and had some more trifle.

So now with the pain back in my foot … "and back in spades too" – ed … I’m off to bed for an early night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that I thought that she didn’t love me any more because of the suicide pills, and how I imagined her sitting at her desk with her fingers crossed.
"That’s not true at all!" she retorted.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes, it is" she replied. "I’m paid according to the number of patients I treat, and if you die, I’d have to take a pay cut!"

Monday 16th February 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… things seemed to go my way at dialysis and I was back home by 18:20 – a good fifty or so minutes earlier than usual. And if it were like that every session, it wouldn’t be so bad at all.

Mind you, it was rather embarrassing. When the taxi came for me, a good twenty-five minutes early, I was … errr … busy riding the porcelain horse and the driver had to wait a few minutes for me.

In fact, I’ve had many a worse twenty-four-hour period than this last one, that’s for sure.

Things brightened up a little last night, for once. For a change, I managed to complete everything that I needed to complete without being drawn too far out of my way by some kind of distraction, and I was actually in bed just before 22:30, and I wish that I could do that more often.

And once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, and although I had one or two vague recollections of being less-than-asleep at certain points during the night, I was still flat-out when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As is usual these days, though, it took me a good while to summon up the force to stagger off into the bathroom, where eventually I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I headed off into the kitchen.

After the hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was living in a different apartment building and the one to which I’d moved was much more modern than this. But when someone was cleaning away at the electricity supply there was a breakdown, a complete nervous breakdown … fell asleep here … and in this apartment building, we found that there were extra rooms behind the technical room. Apparently, we should have one of these rooms each, presumably for storage, but no one had known about this. The people who owned my apartment before I did had probably lived here on and off five hundred metres before the present tew could make his objection.

Whatever this was about, I have no idea. It’s hardly surprising that I was in a deep sleep in the middle of it because it makes very little sense at all.

We’d started back at school and we’d only been there a couple of days when we found out that there was to be a huge reorganisation. Of course, we had no idea what this reorganisation was all about or why it was even necessary and there were all kinds of speculation and rumours floating around. In the end, we were called into our class assemblies and we were introduced to two new students. One was someone who lived in New York and the other one – we didn’t really catch where he came from – but it turned out that they were being trained in espionage duties and were to work on the Communist Party in Eastern Europe. But while we were waiting to be spoken to and the speculation was going on, I made quite a few witty comments, in particular in the question of a discussion about keeping your own petrol tanker lorry as a way of hedging against inflation, and the teacher asked me where I’d picked all these up. I replied “well, I had a strange father”. Anyway, these two guys, they didn’t really fit in, and they disappeared quite soon. But someone said that she saw one of them in prison in Den Haag. Apparently, he’d been collecting all of the information and feeding it back to the Russians. There was also a story about a boy in our class who lived in a motor caravan. He’d been given notice to quit practically the same day, so he was digging his heels in, making the field something like his own with his car tyre ruts and so on until he could find a compromise with the girls in the girls’ fields who were playing hockey during the winter.

The part about training for espionage relates to a book that I’ve been reading on and off about the creation of the British Secret Service, and the schoolboy living in a mobile home is presumably a reference to a John Le Carré book that I read years ago about a teacher at a public school who was living in a caravan at the back of the school playing field.

However, there was not much likelihood of our school having a huge reorganisation during the period when I was there. Steeped in tradition going back centuries.

There were a couple of other dreams too, but you don’t need to know about them, except that in one of them, I was still working a couple of years after retirement age, something that seems to be a regular occurrence in a dream these days.

The nurse turned up as usual but he didn’t stay long. He had his blood kit with him so I imagine that he must have had a queue of patients at his office waiting to give blood samples.

Once he’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

Not that I advanced very far, though. I came across an interesting report that told us that last year, advances in radiocarbon dating techniques revealed that the battle-scarred dead in what Mortimer Wheeler called “the War Cemetery” didn’t all relate to one incident. It seems to show that there were at least three, and maybe more distinct phases of warfare, only one of which might possibly fit in with Wheeler’s theory of a Roman attack.

Incidentally, the new report doesn’t fit in completely with Sharples’ interpretation either. Nevertheless, he’s not above taking another sly dig at Wheeler, commenting that he was making "a subjective impression which conveniently suited the historical interpretation applied to the evidence."

Back in here, I revised my Welsh, even though there’s no lesson tomorrow, and then began to track down the music for the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and as I mentioned earlier, the taxi was really early to come to fetch me for dialysis.

The wind outside was such that I had to leave by the back door, where the cars can pull up right outside the building in the alley reserved for the fire brigade. That’s much more convenient for me than being bowled over by a gale-force wind.

We had to pick up someone else along the way but even so, I arrived at dialysis at 13:25. There was quite a queue of cars but luckily I was in the small room with only four beds, of which three (including mine) were occupied.

The nurse was busy finishing off the first arrival when I went in, but the lady who was second wanted more time to prepare so I was seen straight away, which was nice. There was no time for me to apply the ice pack, but I didn’t care. The sooner I start, the sooner I finish, even if it was one of my favourite nurses.

Once I was up and running, I was left pretty much alone, although the doctor on duty turned up to see me just as I was about to be unplugged. Of course, I wasn’t going to stay around to talk.

The taxi was waiting for me, which was also nice, so I was back here really early.

But once more, there’s chaos in the building. Yet another proprietor, fed up with the inability of the House committee to organise this fibre optic installation, has gone ahead and had his walls drilled, even though, in a historic building such as this one, it’s streng verboten. I decided to throw some oil onto the flames by writing to the committee. It probably won’t galvanise them into action, but we can live in hope.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza, followed by jam roly-poly and vegan sorbet. That will keep the lupus from the porte for a while, as they might have said in Ancient Rome.

So right now, I’m off to bed, early, I hope. A good sleep will do me some good if I can manage it, but this decent twenty-four-hour spell can only last so long.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse and his blood-sample kit … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in the old days in Transylvania –
"Blood samples should be taken at the office between 08:30 and 09:30. If you are unable to attend, please let us know and we will send a bat."

Monday 15th December 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S NICE …

… lie-in, it was back to the daily grind and an 06:29 start this morning. And that’s what I call disappointing because I enjoyed myself yesterday, even if Isabelle the Nurse didn’t bring me coffee in bed.

To make matters worse, it wasn’t an early night last night either. I’m still stuck in this dilatory, time-wasting mood where I just can’t seem to advance at all. By the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing, it was 23:30 and I still wasn’t in bed.

Once in bed, though, I slept flat-out until the alarm went off and I could have gone back to bed to do it all again afterwards. It took me a good few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed and toddle off into the bathroom, where I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

In the kitchen, I made myself a hot ginger, lemon and honey drink to take with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was back on the taxis again and I was trying to make myself better organized, so I began to do some kind of tidying up of the yard. We had a crashed Ford Cortina down there and I wanted that brought round to somewhere else so that it would be easier for me to take parts from it. For some reason, no-one was particularly interested in helping me. We had a couple of other newer vehicles, one of which was a Cavalier diesel. The carpets in the front were rather worn, so I ordered a new front half section. I wanted to fit that in at some time but the car was out working, so it wasn’t possible right at that particular moment, so I decided to go back outside again. Nerina was there and she said that she’d come with me. She was working for me, but she was making it quite clear without any subtlety at all that she was interested in entering a relationship with me. I was rather cautious because this was the kind of thing that could lead to a disaster at some point, so I was very noncommittal. We went outside, and I said to Nerina “I’ll tell you something – that if we do ever get together, I’ve decided something extremely important” but she took no notice. I must have said it four times as we walked down to the bottom of the garden but she took no notice at all. Down at the bottom of the garden, the crashed Cortina had gone. I asked Nerina about it, and she said that she’d lent it to another taxi driver who was just starting up in business. I wasn’t really pleased about that because I didn’t want my crashed cars to be going around on the road, least of all with someone else not associated with me. I asked her how much she’d agreed for a rental. She replied “nothing at all”. I thought that that was an absurd situation, with one of my crashed cars being driven around by another taxi operator, and at the same time, we’re not taking anything out of it except the hassle of losing whatever good reputation we would otherwise have.

This taxi-driving is rapidly becoming an obsession with me, isn’t it? But it’s true to say that there were one or two crashed Cortinas around where I was. We’d pick them up for peanuts, some for even nothing at all, and then I’d break them for the spare parts. I still have a few bits and pieces lying around on the farm, including an engine that I rebuilt but which threw a con-rod on its first time out. There’s also a matching 2000cc engine and auto gearbox for a Cortina 2000E. The big ends have gone in the engine, and so the car (also down on the farm) has a 1600cc manual set-up in it right now. But the car, the engine and the auto box, all with matching numbers, are probably worth a fortune these days – but not as much as the 2000E estate that’s in my barn down there.

Isabelle the Nurse came along as usual, and I told her how disappointed I was about the lack of coffee yesterday morning. In reply, she told me to clear off.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Our author seems to have become sidetracked just now. We’ve been having an exploration of the Iron Age hillforts in Dorset, such as Maiden Castle and the Badbury Ring. Interestingly, though, he makes reference to an Iron Age barrow and how the Roman road-builders put their road right through it. So much for respecting the culture of the original inhabitants, hey?

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then I began to work on my Welsh homework. And this batch is difficult because it concerns the part of the course that I missed when I was at Rennes the other week. I won’t be doing much celebrating when this lot comes back.

My cleaner was late arriving to apply my anaesthetic but it didn’t matter too much, because the taxi was late arriving. And then we had to go back to the Centre Normandy because the driver had forgotten his telephone. As a result, we were late arriving at dialysis and, as usual, I was last to be coupled up

The doctor came to see how I was, and I took the opportunity to talk to him as to why the latest medication isn’t on the list of long-term medication. He assured me that it was, and he even showed me a duplicate where it was clearly so labelled. So, what are they playing at in the pharmacy?

After that, everyone left me alone, except Julie the Cook, who showed me some photos of her latest creations. I shall miss her when she’s gone.

Having had on the outward trip the guy who thinks that he runs the show, on the way back, I had my favourite Belgian taxi driver. She wasn’t very happy, as she had just witnessed a serious accident on the motorway and she needed to talk. And so we talked all the way home, but you could tell that this was preying on her mind.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to escort me into the building, and I noticed that there were now lights on in my old apartment. Someone has finally moved in.

Tea was the other half of last night’s pizza, and once it had been warmed up, it tasted even nicer than yesterday. The fruitcake and the last of the chocolate soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, falling asleep at my desk, I’m going to bed. It’s the last Welsh course of the year tomorrow so I want to be on form for it, although it’s a hopeless task, I reckon.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pharmacy … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I came home from work and found Nerina in tears.
"Whatever is the matter, dear?" I asked
"It’s the pharmacist " she said. "You’ve no idea how rude he has been to me today."
So off I went to have a few words with him about it.
"Don’t blame me!" he said. "Your wife asked me how a rectal thermometer worked, and all I did was to tell her! "

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

… asleep at the dining table in mid-meal, I suppose that I’d better hurry up, write my notes and go to bed before another disaster overtakes me. I’ve been having far too many of them just recently.

At least, last night wasn’t as late as some have been just recently. For once, I was actually in bed by 23:00. That was really nice. After all, a nice long sleep will do me the world of good, I reckon.

Ha ha! They were famous last words, weren’t they? Although it wasn’t until 06:15 that I actually awoke definitively, I’d had a very turbulent night and had awoken on several occasions.

Once more, it was another struggle to leave the bed and go to the bathroom. It was clothes-washing day too, with not having had a shower yesterday, so I gave my undies a good going over. I have to keep abreast of things like this.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to have travelled so far. I was going on a mission to work somewhere in a town centre. With the town centre of this place being very tightly controlled for parking, I’d written a letter to the local council to explain what I’d been doing and asking for authorisation to park there for free during the period for which I was there. The day that my work started there, I set off and arrived. I went to the council’s offices and was met by a young girl who was in charge of the official parking. She told me that they had received my letter and that I could leave my car in the official car park, but it needed someone to let me in all the time. So she went with me. I saw a room with all kinds of machines in it, ticket machines for this, ticket machines for that. She went to one of the machines and presumably pressed a button to override it, but nothing happened. She ended up going back to her desk for something. She came back and said “you might just sit here for a moment”, pointing to an empty seat by someone’s desk. “You can watch a James Bond film if you can understand the language”. I looked, and it was a fight between James Bond and some evil character but I didn’t recognise the subtitles so I didn’t know in what language it was in. She came back a little later and allowed me to go in. She told me that the letter that I had sent, which was in the office inside the car park, I was to put that on my windscreen so that people who didn’t recognise the car would see what was happening. I drove in, and saw that this fight with James Bond and this character was actually taking place on the staff car park.

Wherever James Bond fits in with all of this, I don’t know. But the story of the car park presumably refers to the situation in Crewe at the moment where a pile of car parks are being or have been developed, replaced by one multi-storey car park in which it costs the earth to park.

And next, I had to go up north, to wherever my landing was taking place. But it was the Navy that was in charge of the boundaries of this city, not the Army, so I thought that my likelihood of being given a pass to travel into the war zone would be about absolutely zero.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything either.

It was the first round of the Nations Rugby Cup. We were all in hospitals so we didn’t really have a chance to see any of the game but we’d heard vaguely that the results had gone our way. Our game was to be played this evening and if we were to win it, we would qualify for the semi-finals. At that moment, it was Emilie the Cute Consultant who appeared. She was doing her rounds. As she was leaving, I called her over and asked her if it was true that we stood a really good chance of making the semi-finals. She said that there didn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t, and we had a little chat about everything. It turned out that the final was being played on the rugby ground across the road from where we lived on Davenport Avenue. I said that if we made it to the final, I’d fight for her to have a really good place on the touchlines where she could watch it. However, she pointed to her stomach and said “well, it would be rather difficult by the time that the final is played”. I replied “don’t worry. I’ll make a trolley for you and I’ll push you over” which made her laugh.

So this is the first time that I’ve dreamed about Emilie the Cute Consultant. This is astonishing. Much as I like her, she hasn’t made anything like the impact on me that has been made by most of the other regular nocturnal visitors.

It’s most unlikely that I would be going to watch a rugby match when there are other more exciting things to do, such as watching paint dry and watching the grass grow. There was a sports field over the road from where we lived in Davenport Avenue (it’s now a housing estate) but it was a cricket ground and football pitch.

But while I was out there on that sports field, there was a girls’ school that was having its sports on there. I was wandering around giving some help and advice to different people. One young girl came over to me and said that she wanted to talk. I asked her what was the matter, and she told me that she’d completely lost all of her interest in this. While at one time she was receiving really, really good marks, she was now just receiving average marks – yn aml, she said – for most of her subjects and she was really disappointed. She wished that she could find her motivation from somewhere. So we began to have a really long chat about this.

Now, yesterday I was looking through some of my photos from a famous trip that I made a few years ago, and they brought back certain memories of a couple of incidents that occurred and which relate to this dream more closely than anyone could imagine.

By the way, yn aml means “often” in Welsh, and Welsh wouldn’t be a language that the subject of this story would have ever used.

Later on, I was back in work. I’d arrived late, about 09:12. I wasn’t very happy about my choice of clothes. I had oil on one of the shirt cuffs, and I was having real difficulty in moving. Trying to make my way to my desk, I was disrupting everyone else’s work because I was swaying about from side to side. I could see that some of my colleagues were becoming rather short-tempered. To finally make my way to my desk was extremely complicated. One of the guys was complaining that I was knocking his papers everywhere so when I tried to stand myself upright better, it was making things worse. Eventually, I could make my way to my chair by disrupting just about everything, but noticed that my computer was missing from my desk. As I sat down, the boss’s secretary came over, starting to hand over slips of paper about things that needed to be doing. She came to me and mis-pronounced my name, saying that a medical report would be required on me because for the last few weeks, I’d been eating nothing but vegetables. I was sitting there, thinking “whatever this report comes up, it’s no loss because I should have been retired a long time ago”. But at that point, just as the dream was becoming interesting, I awoke.

At one time, dreams about being over the age of retirement in a miserable working environment were an everyday feature of these notes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s been a while though since the last one.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, sorted out my legs and then cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

Once I’d finished, I went one better than David Crosby because, although it wasn’t Christmas when I had the ‘flu, I am still not feeling up to par. It makes quite an improvement though, this new, trim me.

Back in here yet again, I finished the notes (Isabelle had interrupted me) and then began to prepare the next radio programme.

My cleaner came along to sort out the anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait. 13:35 it finally turned up, so we were hours late arriving at dialysis.

On top of that, there were dozens of tests to perform, and then my internet account there had expired and needed renewing, so today took forever

At least Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me again. And you won’t believe this but she now has an infection. I apologised profusely but she didn’t think that it was the same as the one that I have. It ruled me out of offering to console her. Imagine a cocktail of infections in my state of health.

So, horribly late, and with a collapsing blood pressure, I ended up leaving, to find that it was the cute taxi driver whom I like very much who was waiting for me. We had a lovely chat on the way home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me in and after she left, I emulated THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on a table inside a tin". Once more, I left some on my plate and, as I mentioned earlier, I fell asleep at the table.

But now, I’m off to bed, thoroughly exhausted and desperate for a good sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told her "I dreamed about you last night"
"Did you?" she asked.
"No" I replied. "You fought me off."

Thursday 2nd October 2025 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of these miserable sessions at dialysis today, where nothing whatever seems to have gone my way.

The only bright spark of the afternoon there was the interaction with some of the nurses. We had a good laugh at times, although I imagine that if the doctor in charge of the service were to overhear it, he would put a stop to it in an instant.

But after the events of yesterday, I needed a good cheering-up. My depression went on and on, culminating in forgetting to switch on the water AGAIN last night, meaning that I had no hot water today.

It was probably due to the fact that I had yet another late night when I failed to concentrate on anything, and finished hours later than I would have liked. I crawled into bed at about 23:30, and at least, I was asleep quite quickly.

The night though was another one of these turbulent ones where I’m tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable. And although I had had some amount of sleep, at about 05:50 I gave up the struggle. By 06:00 I was up and about.

After a wash and shave (in lukewarm water) I went for breakfast. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And what a task that was!

There was a group of prisoners in a prisoner-of-war camp who decided that they were going to escape. They had thought of a foolproof plan and were making their preparations before leaving. The first thing that they had done was that they had arranged to have six cups of coffee each to take with them. They were busy sorting out these cups onto some kind of trolley that they could pull along behind them. They were discussing their route. The obvious route was to head for Switzerland, but one of the people planned to head for the interior first – the interior of Germany, and make his way round in some kind of arc. They were discussing various towns that they would pass through on the way. There was some guy there with his wife, and they were planning on escaping. When they were out of the prison, the wife fell into the River Rhine or one of the rivers that pass into Switzerland. It was ice-cold and she was in danger of freezing. A barge was going past so she put out her hand and caught hold of a trailing rope from the barge and allowed herself to be pulled on down the river. That way, she managed to cross into Switzerland, although her husband was miles behind, trying to make his way down to the Swiss border on foot.

Part of this relates to the story of Edouard Izac, a lieutenant in the American Navy in World War I. He was captured when his ship was torpedoed and was taken to Germany. He escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp and although he was only eighteen miles from the Swiss border, he took a circuitous route of almost ten times that in order to throw his pursuers off the scent.

As for the rest of it, I’ve no idea at all.

Then there were two athletes, male athletes, who were caught in a wave of a German advance. Rather than be taken prisoner, they linked their arms between each other’s elbow joints and, hanging on to their necks, they counted to three and suddenly wound and moved their bodies, thus breaking their necks.

We discussed the “Fetterman massacre” a few weeks ago. The opinion of the fort’s medical officer was that the two officers had linked arms and shot each other, presumably to avoid capture and torture by the Native Americans.

There was then a story about a guy and an associate of his who were tramping miles across the country accompanied by two cats. They came to a big girder bridge across a river. They had to toss these cats onto the bridge and then leap onto the bridge themselves in order to cross. Instead of crossing, they went to the bridge-keeper’s office. The bridge-keeper was discussing various criminal matters with various different people, about robberies and crimes and everything that was due to take place, as if he was some kind of organiser. The guy in this dream went over to him and was talking about his plan to kill some businessman by looping two chains around his door. When the guy opened the door and subsequently closed it, the chains would pull in really tightly and break his spine. The bridge-keeper warned him about doing this and didn’t recommend it at all. But early next morning at the house of this wealthy guy, he came out of his door and then went and slammed it, and you could hear the groan from outside. A couple of hours later, his wife awoke and went downstairs. She couldn’t find her husband so she called the police. The police found the guy who had climbed onto the bridge. He was sitting in his car, naked. The Police Inspector interrogated him but extracted no particular information so he had a Constable sit behind him in the car, armed with a shotgun. The guy in the front seat said that he was nervous about the shotgun, but the Inspector told him that he could be even more nervous if he knows that it’s loaded.

What I shall do with this dream is to leave you lot to interpret it.

From there, it went on back to my house. I was in my bedroom, somehow confined there and wasn’t allowed out. I heard the front door open and it was the nurse apparently who came in. When I was finally allowed out of my bedroom, he was giving Nerina an injection for something or other and a series of tablets. I wondered why this had taken place. Then he gave me my injection. Nerina was there with some kind of machine that had a recoil starter. She was pulling on this starter, but it was very, very difficult to start. She had to cut part of the cowling away to reach the choke, which was one of these flip-chokes that you work with your thumb. Eventually she managed to cut the piece away and it was quite a neat job. I could see these thousands of tiny, tiny LED lights around this machine so I asked her what they were for. She told me that they were for Carnaval. I asked her if we were going to have a float at Carnaval then.

It won’t be long before we shall be preparing for Carnaval, assuming that the current mayor doesn’t ban it and he doesn’t want to redevelop the funfair site or the workshop where they build the floats. Anything is possible around here at the moment. And it’s nice to see Nerina back, although why she would confine me to my room I have no idea at all.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and sorted me out, and then I could press on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British, having captured Philadelphia, have now abandoned it and are retreating to New York. That was a mystifying decision, because the only way to defeat an army is to bring it to battle. Retreating like this and abandoning posts that the enemy would like to occupy is a pointless exercise. They may just as well have stayed in New York in the first place.

After breakfast, I came back in here and carried on sorting out the hard drive, making sure that the directories run how they should and linking files to programmes. But I was interrupted by the charity shop that took away the unwanted furniture. They were only here ten minutes yet in that time they must have worked like heroes.

My faithful cleaner came along as usual to deal with the anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait (and wait and wait) for the taxi. If that wasn’t enough, there was someone else to pick up so we were hours late arriving.

One thing that they had asked me to do on Monday was to conserve one day’s output of … errr … liquid waste and take it in a plastic bottle so that the laboratory could examine the contents. That was embarrassing.

And I also have to say that I was surprised about how little there was. And that’s probably why my weight had almost gone off the scale today and why they said that I had to stay for four hours. What with being so late arriving, that was horrendous news.

“Never mind” said one of the nurses. “You can sleep here with us tonight.”

“You know what” I replied. “That’s the best proposition that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.”

There were cramps, low blood pressure ringing the alarm, all kinds of things. A patient had a funny turn in her bed, and another one collapsed when he stood up. It was all go this afternoon.

The dietician came to see me too and had another little moan about my diet. It’s not doing her much good though because I’m not changing, even if my appetite has plummeted dramatically.

The taxi was waiting when I finished, but even so, I was hours late coming home. Especially as we had to go via his office to pick up some papers.

Tea was late tonight – bangers and mash with cheese sauce and veg – and no washing-up as I have no hot water. That’s a horrible task awaiting me in the morning, assuming that I switch the water on again tonight. I hate waking up to washing-up in the sink waiting to be done.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow. But not looking forward to it. I have a pain in the neck and in the shoulders and I’m not feeling too well at all. I wish that I could have a good night’s sleep.

But before I go, seeing as I have been talking about my … errr … liquid output … “well, one of us has” – ed … my cleaner saw me pick up the bottle and put it in a plastic bag
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Nothing really” I replied. “I’m just taking the p***.”

Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing whatever seems to have gone your way? Well, that’s how it seems to have been today.

Actually, it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and one or two (but only one or two) things did seem to go according to plan, but the rest of the time seems to have been spent lurching from one disaster to another.

There’s no point complaining about last night, because finishing my notes early but going to bed late seems to be par for the course these days and nothing that I seem to be able to do will ever change that, by the looks of things.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly but whatever happened after that was the first entry in this catalogue of disasters.

When I awoke, I had a feeling that there was something totally wrong, so I checked the time. Yes, it was actually 07:10 – some forty minutes after the alarm should have gone off. Did I sleep through the 06:29 alarm and its repeater at 06:33? Or did I forget to set it last night (it should set itself automatically)?

When you consider how loud BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE is, first thing in the morning, it can really only be the latter.

So at that point, I leaped to my feet … “well, not exactly” – ed … and staggered off into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for my medication. That was when Bane of Britain found that he had forgotten to take his Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D on Saturday

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was playing American football last night. We were all lined up on the goal line of our team, and someone threw the ball in from the touchline. It landed almost right at my feet so I fell on it to try to kill the ball. For some reason, the referee didn’t call the ball dead so I had to struggle to my feet, with two or three of the opposing players clinging on, and tried to move it away from near the goal. I managed to make about three or four paces before the weight pulled me down to the floor. I thought that that was really impressive, given everything else happening at the time.

Throwing in from the touchline in Gridiron? Somehow I’m confusing my sports here. It might be possible to do so in Rugby Union, I suppose, but then the ball wouldn’t be called dead in that kind of circumstance anyway.

And then there was something else about being in the kitchen of someone else’s house. They had a large white dog that was always hungry, looking for its food, so they simply turned the door of the cupboard upside-down so that the dog’s food was at the top and the dog couldn’t reach it. After a couple of minutes of sniffing around, the dog suddenly began scratching at the bottom of the cupboard door. It had only worked out where the food was, but it couldn’t manage to open the door. The old man of the house was quite comfortable with this going on, although everyone else wasn’t so much. Then this girl appeared. She walked into the kitchen where everyone was sitting. She said something along the lines that she was feeling hungry, but she had to hurry because she was having to go out. The young boy of the family said “the food’s off tonight”. She wondered what he meant. He told her that her father was fed up of the kitchen not actually making a profit so was rather in the way of putting various restrictions on what went on. The dog was amongst the first people to suffer.

That’s another dream that is totally meaningless as far as I am concerned. Whoever heard of a kitchen making a profit? I wish mine would.

But at least there’s no mention of anything to do with the American Revolutionary War.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in as usual, full of good humour and bonhomie. She dealt with my legs and feet, and then breezed out as rapidly as she had come. I could then push on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we’re discussing the British attack on Philadelphia where, for once, it’s the American dilatory tactics that affect the battle, with the British for once pushing on rapidly.

But Henry Carrington’s writing is sometimes, quite unintentionally amusing because of the stance that he takes. He writes pages about the “looting, pillaging and plundering undertaken by the British Army” but glosses over the “American Army seeking forced contributions from the local inhabitants”

Back in here, I had to prepare my timetable for the Centre de Ré-education and then do one or two other things, but the taxi driver rang me to say that he would be early, so I had to abandon everything in order to make myself ready.

At the Centre de Ré-education, my first appointment was with a physiotherapist who gave me a good in-depth examination in order to work out what programme of exercises would do me most good.

The second one was with with someone from the APA – the organisation that deals with autonomy. She wanted to see what I could do and what I needed in order to continue to live alone in my own property.

My next sessions are organised for Friday, so it’s all going to be really quick.

The taxi was due to come to pick me up at 12:30, but by 13:00 I was still waiting, so I ‘phoned them up. Eventually, the car arrived. The driver had had a breakdown … “he means ‘the car'” – ed … and it had taken a while to fix.

Back here, I could hear the computer in the office making strange noises, but I needed a disgusting drink break and to take my midday medication.

My cleaner appeared shortly afterwards and so I went for a shower. It seemed to be easier to climb into the shower today, which made a pleasant change, and it was beautiful. This shower really works and I’m glad that I had it done.

The washing is building up, due to not being able to use the washing machine until the leak somewhere is fixed, so my cleaner grabbed an armful of clothes to wash in her machine, which was nice.

Back in here, we had the ultimate catastrophe. The computer had ground to a halt and wouldn’t restart. There was just an error message “auto-repair cannot fix this drive”. And that’s bad news because I’d only bought this drive in March this year.

This could, in normal circumstances, be considered a calamity but that’s not so in here.

First of all, I keep the system files on one disk and the data files on a second, so that if one fails, the other one still is accessible.

Secondly, it’s the system disk that has failed, and I still have the previous disk, the one prior to March 2025, that I had put on one side after I’d taken it out. So having found it again (which is a surprise after the house move when I can’t find anything at all), I swapped it back and reinstalled it.

But it’s totally disappointing, and it’s shattered my illusions. The drive that has failed is a 1TB Solid State Drive and because these drives have no moving parts, which, according to their publicity, makes “them faster, quieter, and more durable. This absence of mechanical components means SSDs are less prone to physical wear and mechanical failure”

Well, so much for the publicity

In the middle of all of this, I crashed out yet again with another one of these catatonic attacks followed by actually slipping off to sleep for twenty minutes. I hope that this isn’t going to become a regular feature. I’ll be totally dismayed if it is.

Rosemary rang me later for a little chat. And it was a little chat too – only one hour long today. One of the subjects of discussion was the semi-feral cat that has adopted her and has rapidly transformed itself into a pampered domestic feline. It makes me even more determined to find a cat that will adopt me.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and once more, I left food on my plate. This is all rather worrying because it’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that things aren’t as they should be. I’m definitely sickening for something

But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I’ve had quite enough of today, thank you very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about my new computer drive … “well, one of us has” – ed … it’s a good job that I can remember my password.
It takes me back to when my brother first had a computer. When setting it up, he needed to create a password so he asked me about it
My reply was “You need at least six characters, plus one capital and also one special character”
So he replied “How about ‘HawkeyeTheLoneRangerThe VirginianMickyMouseBossHoggGandalfParisHermionebecauseIloveher”

Thursday 7th August 2025 – I AM IN …

… total agony after the dialysis session today.

For a change, the taxi was early today. And not just five minutes either but a good half an hour early. But then came the bad news. There were over three litres of water to extract today (which explains why I have been so tired) so they made me stay for four hours. And in the bed where the mattress has collapsed right where I put my left hip so all through the session, I was in complete and utter pain.

It had all the air of being a good day too, unfortunately.

Last night, I was late yet again, despite not hanging around all that much. I think that it was down to the fact that tea took so long to make that I didn’t begin to write my notes until much later that usual. I could well have done without that.

Once in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly although I do have some vague memory of being awake at about 01:30. However, I went back to sleep again and there I stayed until about 06:05.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to gather myself together before I fell out of bed, and then I staggered off into the bathroom, and then the kitchen for my morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams where I was working in the office but I didn’t really care. I was letting all the work build up but I didn’t really care because I was planning on retiring, just walking away and leaving it all. I’d said that a couple of weeks ago but it was now three weeks later, everything was still there and I was still there and I hadn’t said that I was going. We were discussing some particular file that needed work doing on it. I had been helping a colleague out with a few things while he was away but when he came back there was still this particular file that needed attention. I said “never mind, bring it to me. Let me have a look at it and I’ll deal with it. I’m sure that I can find the time”. In the meantime, he was somewhere around and there was some kind of programme about houses. It showed this weird kind of semi-detached pair of bungalows. It turned out that it was fabricated out of an old London single-decker bus from 100 or so years ago. I seem to remember that in Shavington there was another bungalow that was exactly the same. It said that in this particular first one if you were to look closely you could see the shape of the bus but I had a really good look and I couldn’t see the shape of the bus at all in it.

We’ve had quite a few of these dreams in the past where I’ve abandoned all idea of working as I prepare for my retirement and then never actually retiring. There has to be something significant in this, I suppose. But the dream about bungalows being basically converted buses is nothing new, although it’s usually old abandoned railway carriages that are the most popular. There are some good examples HERE but as far as I know, there were none in Shavington.

Last night, there was a plan by Stoke City to have a big festival of football because they had reached an important milestone in their age so they began to organise this festival. They asked members of Crewe Alexandra if they could help. It turned out that when someone from Crewe was giving the matter some thought, it turned out that it was 100 years since the formation of Crewe’s first team. So instead, they began to organise a festival of their own and that it would be bigger and better and more important than the one that was being organised by Stoke City.

If they want to celebrate the 100 years of Crewe Alexandra’s first team, they are rather late. The club was founded in 1877 and played its first competitive match in December of that year.

There was another dream that took place in the hilly country where it had rained almost non-stop for several weeks. All of the ground above a village had become waterlogged and slowly a small depression had appeared in the hillside. This was immediately cordoned off and a guard was mounted on it. Slowly, the depression increased in size. Eventually the news filtered out that it was a burial chamber from when the village had first become occupied in the 1830s and people were warned to keep well away. But as the rain continued and the depression increased in size, slowly the earth was washed away and people began to see the old coffins. I was keeping well away because I didn’t want to see a decaying corpse or a skeleton.

Part of this dream seems to relate to Penrhiwceiber maybe, when we were talking about the desertion of the Welsh countryside as people flocked to the mines and the heavy industry. But the rest – the coffins, skeletons and all of that – could easily have its parallel from when we were in Greenland and climbed up to a cave near Uummannaq where a few years earlier, several mummified Inuit bodies had been found. When we were in the interior of the country later, scrambling over the tundra we came across a hitherto-undiscovered stone chamber burial with the skeleton still present, visible through a small gap in the stones. Of course, it’s very bad form to disrespect the Inuit dead in this way, but at first we had no idea what it was. We thought that it might have been a food cache or a collapsed fox trap.

Isabelle was late again this morning. The town was heaving with people, with it being the annual brocante. Some of the streets were closed off to vehicles and with the mayor’s wonderful new road system, the diversion took the cars miles out of their way.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Hilaire Belloc’s THE OLD ROAD.

It hasn’t taken me long to start nit-picking, that’s for sure. He tells us that "the Romans invented frontiers", which must have come as a dreadful surprise to the Chinese who started 400 years previously to build what eventually became the Great Wall of China, and also to the Neolithic and Iron Age settlers of Britain whose border dykes and earthworks we discussed at length several months ago.

He also tells us that "the south always conquered the north,", another comment that must have come as a surprise to King Penda of Mercia and Kind Aethelhere of the East Anglians, who were soundly beaten by Oswu of Northumbria, and Penda lost half of his kingdom.

One interesting comment that he makes concerns the Normandy coast between the Cotentin and the Seine estuary. He notes that it "gave an opportunity for the early ships to creep under the protection of a windward shore.". That was something that was used to full advantage in June 1944.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programme that I had started yesterday, spending probably more time looking for the notes that I’d written that doing anything else. I was so carried away that I forgot to note the time and ended up being quite late.

My cleaner was quite late too so we had something of a rush, but when I was ready, she helped me downstairs to the new apartment. There were some things that I wanted to do. However, as I said earlier, the taxi came far too early and I hadn’t done a thing.

The taxi had to drop off another passenger – a young lady – somewhere out in the wild at the back of Sartilly and the driver spent more time chatting her up than he did concentrating on the road, and it was a most unpleasant drive. Apart from that, he was all accelerator and brake which is not the way to drive a diesel car.

However, at least with these new Social Security regulations about shared travel, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

At Avranches, we were way too early so I had to hang around. Then I was weighed and found to be considerably over my dry weight and the machine’s capacity so I had to stay for four hours. And then they put me in the bed with the collapsed mattress so I was in total agony throughout the whole four-hour session.

First though, I crashed out. For some reason (probably because of the water retention issue) I was exhausted and couldn’t keep awake. The pain soon brought me round, though, and in the end it became so bad that I was obliged to stop work as I couldn’t concentrate.

Eventually I was let loose and the boss of the drivers brought me home.

Once more, it was a very difficult climb back up here, and I’m not sure whether I can cope with the five that remain before I move downstairs.

Tea was a vegan burger with pasta and tomato sauce, simple but delicious, and now I’m off to bed for a good sleep ready to crack on with work tomorrow if I can and there aren’t too many interruptions.

But seeing as we have been talking about it raining non-stop, in that village in the Welsh mountains … "well, one of us has" – ed … the rain increased and the floods began. Everyone evacuated except the vicar. When someone in a boat urged him to climb in, he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
A couple of hours later the church is flooded and he’s standing on the roof, when another boat came past. The occupants urged him to climb in but he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
A couple more hours later and he’s standing on the top of the steeple as the floods lap around his feet. Another boat came by and the occupants urged him to climb in but he replied "oh no! The Good Lord will provide."
However, ten minutes later he’s swept away.
In the queue at the Pearly Gates he met St Peter, to whom he expresses his dismay. "I don’t understand it" he said. "I put my faith in the Lord that he would save me, and he let me down."
"What do you mean ‘let you down’?" roared St Peter. "He did send three boats to rescue you."

Saturday 12th July 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again.

For once, the taxi came early and the other passenger who travels with me on Thursday and Saturday was already on board.

For once, we arrived quite early

For once, they were ready and waiting

For once, I was coupled up quite quickly and quite early

For once, it was only a three-and-a-half hour session

For once, as the session slowly drew to a close, I was looking forward to an early escape and return home

And so regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens next in circumstances like this.

In fact, it was a pretty miserable day all round, what with one thing and another, and I wonder when I might be able to step off this treadmill.

Despite my best efforts, last night was another late night when once more I failed miserably to make any impression upon the idea of having an early night.

This pain in my chest was also playing havoc with me. I couldn’t cough and I couldn’t sneeze because I was in total agony every time I tried to expand my lungs. I’ve no idea what’s happening now.

Anyway, I settled down in my lovely clean bed thanks to my faithful cleaner … "huh?" – ed … Yes, I suppose that I’d better explain. It wasn’t she who settled me down in my lovely clean bed, but in the afternoon she had changed the bedding as part of the plan to make my bedroom/office/recording studio look nice, clean and comfortable, as indeed it proved to be.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, however, when I awoke, it was still dark. I tried to go back to sleep but I wasn’t able to do so, and so I gave some serious thought to raising myself from the Dead. However, a glance at the time on my ‘phone dissuaded me. 03:10 is far too early to be up and about, even if I can’t sleep.

Consequently, I decided to lie there semi-comatose until a more realistic time, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. Bane of Britain has struck again, asleep when the alarm went off.

When I awoke, I was dreaming about something to do with the Welsh Premier League and Y Bala FC. As usual, it evaporated so quickly from my mind before I could take hold of the dictaphone.

It’s not difficult to guess what it might be, though. Having failed to qualify for Europe for a couple of years now, the money has run out, the budget has been slashed, and according to the FAW’s squad lists, at least twelve of their star players, more than an entire team, have voted with their feet. As far as I can tell, to date they have signed just four, and none of them would be what I would call “significant” signings.

Over the past few years we’ve seen several clubs in the same position and it’s usually always ended in tears and involving relegation. But the future of Y Bala looks more bleak than all of the others right now and I reckon that unless they pull something magical out of the free transfers elsewhere, it’s going to be a very long and hard season.

It took a while to come to my senses yet again and to unstrap the ice pack, with which I went to sleep, from my right knee. And with the pain still wreaking havoc in my chest, I went off to the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

While I was in the bathroom, I set the washing machine off. With loads of bedding and everything else, there were probably about three machines-worth but one will suffice for now, with the bedding and the hospital stuff seeing that I might be back for chemotherapy in ten days time.

The kitchen was another really slow, leisurely affair while I took my time with the medication. I just couldn’t find the motivation today. As I said earlier, it was a pretty miserable day all round.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Nerina and I had to go to see a sports scientist kind of person for my knee. We were sitting in the waiting room and we heard him sawing a child’s foot to even off the bone. We could hear her screaming and it was absolutely horrible. Then we had to go into the room and it was freezing cold so the first thing that I did was to light the gas fire. Nerina was busy arranging everything and tidying it up. She made some kind of remark to me about why I wasn’t helping. I replied “I can’t possibly help because I’m so slow to move around these days on my crutches and you are very much quicker than me in doing everything”. However, she wasn’t very happy with that kind of answer.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not my usual habit to post distressing dreams like this. Some of you will be eating your tea right now, others will be turning the page, and I will be feeling extremely uncomfortable. In fact, I can’t understand why I did post it because “distressing” really is the correct word to describe it.

And why this kind of dream should occur when Nerina is there, I don’t know that either, but Nerina and I ended up just as we would end up after coming back from holiday

However, there was something in there about a group of musicians being on tour. They had a Volkswagen Microbus and there were so many of them that half of their group, the smaller ones, were sleeping on the floor with a series of camp beds above them. That was where the elder ones slept, all inside this VW caravan. The heat generated by these people must have been intense and the smell of bodies overpowering. I seem to remember it heading towards Barry Town in order to be there for the special day a week next weekend when hopefully the gates might be hung.

As for what this may be about, it’s a pretty good description of that trip I mentioned a few months ago when a group of people piled into a J4 van in Crewe in 1973 and drove all the way down to the Windsor Free Festival, blowing a tyre and almost overturning on the way, while my friend from the Wirral and I went down a different way on a Triumph 350cc motorbike.

The nurse turned up early yet again. He applied this heat treatment to my knee and dealt with my legs, after which he left. I could then push on with breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has been talking about the various “Undershafts” in London, and explains how the name came about, "because that of old time, every year on May-day in the morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there … which shaft … was higher than the church steeple."

He goes on to describe how it was stored "laid along over the doors and under the pentises of one row of houses" and mentions its ignominious end when the curate of St Katherine’s Christ Church denounced it as idolatrous and "whereon it had rested two-and-thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking as his share so much that had lain over his door".

After breakfast I took the washing from the machine and hung it up in the living room window to dry. And that’s a task that’s becoming harder and harder as time goes by.

There were things to do after that and I was in the middle of doing them when my faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches.

She was still here chatting when the taxi arrived and so I descended to the vehicle and we cleared off into a glorious, hot summer’s day. Far too nice to go to dialysis.

At the beginning, I spoke about some of the events at dialysis today, but one thing that I haven’t mentioned is that the connection was the most painful that I have had for a very, very long time and I was in agony throughout the entire session.

The je m’en foutiste doctor came to see me during the afternoon. I told him about my complaints so he put his stethoscope to my chest and totally ignored my knee yet again.

There was plenty of work for me to do and I was advancing quite well, looking forward to a really early finish with just ten minutes to go, when another patient had a crisis and all of the nurses went a-running. And I was simply left there, sitting like Piffy on a rock while the nurses dealt with the emergency.

Eventually, Sarah came back to deal with me and to unplug me, for which I was heartily relieved. Mind you, she dropped the pipe and there is now blood all over my shirt. The good news is that I am now below my “inactive” weight which suits me fine.

In the hallway my co-passenger and I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. Twenty-five minutes later, he turned up.

It’s the busiest weekend of the year this weekend, and we’d seen the enormous queues on the motorway as we came down. There had been plenty of breakdowns in the afternoon and as the taxi company holds the contract with the Highways Authority for dealing with repatriations, they had a whole pile of vehicles out of the area, so those who remained were rushed off their feet.

Consequently, we were no earlier coming home than we might otherwise have been.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I struggled upstairs, and then I collapsed into a chair, totally worn out.

Tea was a breadcrumbed quorn fillet with salad and baked potato, all very nice, but I struggled to eat it tonight. My appetite still hasn’t come back and it’s only ten or so days to my next chemotherapy.

But I’ll worry about that another time. Right now, I’m going to bed and I can’t say that I’m sorry.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Nerina … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what did you like especially about Nerina?"
"I liked the fact" I said "that she could see both sides to every argument."
"Could she really?" he asked.
"Indeed she could" I said. "Both sides – her side and the wrong one."

Friday 20th June 2025 – WE NOW HAVE …

… a plumber to do the shower. He charges much more than I was expecting but he’s available and willing to do the work. The only thing that I have to watch is that he wants to do his project in my bathroom rather than my project in my bathroom. That’s the kind of thing that irritates me intensely, so I shall have to keep a close eye on him.

And on Wednesday next week we shall have a kitchen – well, at least, a delivery of all of the flat packs that will need to be assembled and fitted. It’s all ordered and paid for, and paying for it was an adventure in itself, more of which anon.

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, last night I was totally and utterly wasted. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so tired. I staggered through the notes, the back-up and the statistics etc, feeling less and less like it as time went on.

In the bathroom I fell asleep while I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse and it took some effort to make my way beck here where I fell straight asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. It was only 22:45 too, which makes a change.

And there I lay, fast asleep and didn’t move a muscle until all of … errr … 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Leaving the bed is quite another thing completely. It was about 05:50 when I finally dragged myself out from under the bedclothes and saw the light of day.

First task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There was some drink that I was supposed to be drinking and its chemical composition was really precise. I’d stir it every day with a metal spoon. One day, I’d left the metal spoon in there. When I went to pull the spoon out, I noticed that half of the spoon had dissolved into the liquid and wasn’t there any more. I was wondering “what on earth is this caustic substance that I’ve been prescribed that I’ve been drinking two of these each day?”.

This sounds like the disgusting drink of which I’m supposed to take two every day. I shudder to think what it might be doing to my insides if its chemical reactions are as bad as its tastes.

Everyone seemed to wake up early this morning so I didn’t have long to spend in here. I went and had a good wash and then to drink some coffee and have a chat.

However, we were all interrupted. A taxi turned up to take me for a medical appointment.

Don’t ask me why, because I was convinced that the appointment is on Monday, but apparently not. So I quickly put on my shoes and went downstairs with the driver.

It was nice to be outside in an early summer’s morning so I wasn’t complaining, although I did wish that there had been someone there to greet me at the doctor’s when I arrived. And after waiting half an hour and having tried the doors and found them all locked, I telephoned the dialysis centre. They confirmed that it is indeed today.

When the driver turned up to take me home, one hour later, the doctor still hadn’t arrived. We went back downstairs anyway to speak to the receptionist of the medical centre. She told me that the doctor wasn’t in today. She checked my appointments on the central medical website and there it was – for Monday, as I had thought. And so we went home.

It goes without saying that I’d missed the nurse. I did ring her up but it was the answerphone that answered the ‘phone.

At least, I could now eat breakfast and drink some more coffee. I certainly needed it.

The next task was to contact the kitchen fitter to remind him that we were waiting. I gave him a gentle nudge with an e-mail and he rang me back as I hoped that he would.

We had another lengthy discussion about everything that we needed and he promised to send me a final schedule later in the afternoon.

The postie turned up in the middle of all of that and dropped off a couple of parcels. All that I seem to be awaiting now are the microwave oven and the kitchen stool. The kitchen stool will be a boon because I really am now struggling to stay standing up for any length of time.

After lunch, the cleaner turned up, closely followed by the plumber. We showed the latter round the bathroom and he seems to think that it’s straightforward, although somewhat complicated.

He doesn’t like my idea of a wall and thinks that I should have a glass panel, “so that there’s more light” – not that light has ever bothered me, and that I should run the pipework behind a false wall rather than embedded in the new wall. He also wants me to change the toilet for a new one.

However, unless there’s a very good reason (which we won’t know until we remove the bath) my plans are staying put.

It took him a while to sort out everything that he needed to know, and then we agreed a price. Or, rather, he told me his. It’s useless giving me an estimate because we don’t know what’s involved until we remove the bath but I know his daily rate. Had I had any more time left to find someone else I would maybe have thought twice, but if he can do the job by the middle of July, which he thinks is eminently feasible, then I shall have to bite the bullet. Each month longer that I stay here, I’m having to pay an extra month’s rent.

With it being such a nice day, my friend and I went for a walk outside afterwards. I went over to the clifftop and watched the sea and the boats for a while until the heat drove me back inside again.

By this time, the kitchen fitter had sent me the list. He’s going to order the stuff from the DIY shop, but I need to order the stuff from IKEA.

That took a while and I blanched at the price that came out of it all, but it has to be paid. I’m probably over-engineering the kitchen But I’m only ever going to do this once and it has to have an island, if, for the only reason, to stop me falling over.

When it came to pay it, the struggle for position of The Worst Bank In The World took a new turn as the Crédit Agricole refused to make the payment.
Consequently, I telephoned them, and they told me "it’s over your transaction limit".
My reply was "I don’t care about the transaction limit. I want to make the payment. What are you going to do about it?"
"We’ll send you a form. Sign it and send it back and we’ll raise your limit temporarily"
"So I have to wait for the post to bring it, and the post to return it?"
"I’m afraid so" she replied.
"How much money do you have of mine in your bank?"
So she told me exactly
"Good. I’ll take it all out and find another bank who wants it and who will do what I want"
"I’ll have the manager call you back"
It goes without saying that the manager has yet to ‘phone.

However, I have been in this position before and it’s not for nothing that I also have bank accounts in Belgium, the UK and Canada. Consequently, the kitchen is all paid for and the things will be here on Wednesday.

In between everything else, I was editing the radio notes that I dictated the other day. They aren’t quite half done but I’ll keep on going with half an hour here, an hour there until they are finished. But it’s difficult to work when you have visitors.

There was also some time somewhere for me to make a loaf of bread, seeing as we had run out. I don’t know where all of this energy came from – or all of this time either, but I’ve certainly been busy today.

Tea tonight was sausage, beans and chips. And very nice it was too. I certainly enjoyed it and so did my friend.

And now I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow I don’t think.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Crédit Agricole … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old farmer went into the bank to speak to the manager
"I need to take out a loan" said the farmer. "I need a new tractor and trailer and a few other bits and pieces"
"And how long will you need it?"
"I can pay you back over fifteen years"
"We can’t do that" said the banker. "To be honest, I doubt that you’ll live that long to repay it."
"Well, if I die" said the farmer "God in his Heaven will reward you when I arrive there."
"And what if you don’t go to heaven but go to hell?"
"In that case," said the farmer "I can give you the money myself when I see you."

Monday 16th June 2025 – I AM WASTED …

… tonight. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as tired as this. I certainly won’t need much rocking tonight, that’s for sure.

Much of it is probably due to dialysis – it always takes it out of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but some of it is probably also due to last night.

By the time that I’d finished doing what I needed to do, it was quite late. Once more, I was side-tracked considerably during the course of the evening writing my notes, and by the time that I went to bed, it was once more long after midnight.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but not for long. The Hound of the Baskervilles in the next room was dreaming and he spent about five minutes having a very tired and feeble barking session. Perhaps I should have lent him my dictaphone so we could have found out what it was that was going on.

After he’d finished, I did manage to go back to sleep but once more, not for long. At 05:10 I was awake again and at about 05:40 I hauled myself out of my stinking pit.

There was something that I needed to do as soon as I awoke but back in here afterwards, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing a coach trip to Canterbury. Somewhere round about Canterbury I was giving a talk to the passengers but I hadn’t managed to have the coach totally clear of the road. It was in a kind of dog-leg up against the kerb. A road-train of coaches, a machine pulling along a couple of carriages, coming past caught my mirror up, tangled it in its mirror arm and with the mirror arms tangled together, mine snapped and the other coach disappeared, taking it away … fell asleep here … although I could see the look of regret on the driver’s face. Later on, after my party was installed in their rooms, I went down the corridor to the room where this other coach party was lodged. I opened the door and was just about to step in when I realised that I should have knocked so I knocked and stepped in. There were people sleeping everywhere on the floor of this room. One or two people moaned and said something. At the very head of the table, at the top in the dark were all of the important people, and one of them must have been the coach driver. I asked if any of them had seen what had happened to the mirror arm that had become entangled up in the arm of their coach. A voice replied that as far as he knew, according to what had happened in the past, the mirror is still on the bus wrapped up in the other one’s mirror arm. It’s still there on the bus and tomorrow they will go down to pick it up and bring it back to me. I was hoping that at least it was still going to be there because anything could happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country.

At one time I was spending quite a few nights driving coaches in my sleep, but the incident of losing a mirror and arm on the road actually did happen to me once when I was taking a coach party to Llangollen. It’s also true that anything can happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country, as I explained to a group of Austrian policemen once when I had to take the European Union’s lorry to Vienna once in 1998 and they wanted me to park it at the side of the road a mere cock-stride from the Slovakian border.

There was also something about a pair of shoes last night. Someone had bought a pair of shoes from me when I was running a shop. They were one of the last pairs that I had and they wanted a guarantee that I’d reimburse them if they were to bring them back unused, which I gave them. But they needed a lot of convincing that it would work. Sure enough, a few days later, she was back and spoke to me in pidgin French like “theeeese ….. shooooes ….. noooooo ….. gooooood”, pointing that she wanted to bring them back. I don’t know what was the matter with her but I gave her back her money. Then she saw another pair of shoes and asked if she could take those instead. Those shoes were €153 so she could take them if she paid me €153. It ended up with quite a lot of discussion and argument but eventually she gave in and took the new shoes at the appropriate price.

This also reminds me of an incident that took place years ago in real life, but the World isn’t ready yet to hear it.

When everyone was awake in the other room I went to sort myself out and then join them for a coffee and a chat, interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who once more failed to take into account the Hound of the Baskervilles. Consequently, he was in and out in a matter of a couple of seconds and we could make breakfast.

After breakfast, the Hound of the Baskervilles took his master for a walk and I listened to the radio programme that I’ll be sending off this week for broadcasting at the weekend.

When everyone came back we sat around making plans until the cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches. She hung around, chatting for a while, and after she left we went downstairs to wait outside in the glorious sunshine for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

13:45 was when it turned up, 45 minutes late, with another passenger in it. It was a quick drive down there, but even so, it wasn’t until 14:45 that I was coupled up, with the usual second pin being much more painful than the first.

Once more, I was left pretty much alone except for when they thought that I’d gone into another diabetic coma and they all came a-rushing over. It seems that I’m not even allowed to have a little … errr … relax these days.

However, Emilie the Cute Consultant came over to chat with me for a while which was nice, and Anaïs sitting on the foot of my bed chatting for five minutes was nice too. I think that they did it just to make sure that I stayed awake.

While I was there, I replied to the edition of WAR AND PEACE that my kitchen fitter sent me, and I hope that we can sort it all out now so that I can push on with the ordering while I have someone here to accept delivery. I’m in a rush to be started.

When i’d been uncoupled, I had to wait for the taxi to arrive. There was another passenger in there too who required dropping off at Kairon so we weren’t back here until after 19:30. I’m certainly seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed, thanks to these new Social Security rules.

There was quite a reception committee waiting for me, and they all helped me upstairs. And I needed it too.

Tea tonight was broccoli stalk soup with fresh bread – another delicious meal. We really are eating well here.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m really exhausted tonight.

But seeing as we have been talking about buying shoes … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman from Crewe went into the shoe shop one Saturday to buy a pair of shoes, and chose a nice pair.
As he was cashing her up, the assistant said "you’ll find these a little tight at first. You might have a pain in your foot for the next couple of days."
"Well, that’s no problem" said the woman from Crewe. "I won’t start wearing them until Wednesday."

Monday 9th June 2025 – THEY HAVE CHANGED …

… my hours at the dialysis centre, so it seems.

However, it wasn’t they who told me, it was the taxi company, when I rang them to find out why the taxi hadn’t come for me

It’s not been changed to the morning either, which was what I was hoping, but instead it’s being put back from 13:30 to 14:00. That is what they would in Mexico call a peon in the hacienda.

What was annoying was that I was good and ready for the taxi at 12:30, after having what for me is a good night’s sleep. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled off to bed. It took a while to go off to sleep but once I’d gone, I’d really gone.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 05:50. I didn’t recall anything whatsoever going on during the night.

Being awake is 05:50 is not the same as being out of bed. That’s for sure. Mind you, when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I was already sitting at my desk. I had decided to make the most of the opportunity and I was dictating the notes for the additional track to complete the radio programme that I almost finished yesterday.

After a wash, a clothes-washing session and the morning’s supply of medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night. I wasn’t going to work any more. I’d been ill so I’d finished work and was at home. I’d been experimenting with a few things. At the end of the week, on a Friday, Nerina came home with a loaf of bread, some cakes and a few types of speciality loaves. She was showing them to me. “I don’t want to steal your thunder” I said, but reaching under the worktop, I pulled out a loaf that I had made during the day. She replied that her loaf was much nicer than mine, which they probably were. I noticed that my loaf of bread had been cut in half. It was in two halves under the counter and one half had not been put into the freezer to freeze. She’d also brought some cakes with her. She told me that a couple were for me. I wondered how I was going to eat them because it was going to be difficult. She made no explanation so I thought that I’d eat one today and maybe one tomorrow, something like that. I thought that this would give me a great opportunity to actually do some baking myself. I didn’t want to be put off by this idea of Nerina buying stuff and bringing it home when I’d like to have a go at making it

Nothing in the above would surprise me. Nerina never had great faith in my cooking, which was hardly surprising bearing in mind my mother’s cooking. What started off my culinary apprenticeship, such as it was, was with Nerina who, having an Italian mother, could rustle up a tasty meal out of the most basic ingredients. The rest was picked up here and there, especially from my friend Liz (“that” Liz, not “this” Liz) and by trial and error – usually much more of the latter.

There was a battle to be fought. It was to take place in the early months of the Spring. It was again something to do with the Wars of the Roses. The armies had to negotiate themselves into a good position so that they could defend it and attack the opponents. One of them had to inform its superiors in whichever army by 12th June – can you imagine that? Preparing for a war and having to organise something for several months like this?

We had a “Wars of the Roses” moment the other day too. This book about medieval castles is really getting to me right now. But the prelude to the battle bears a strong resemblance to the prelude for the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513

Later on, it was something to do with mobile ‘phones. Some young boy had had a mobile ‘phone at first and was totally confused by all of the offers on the market. His father sat down and went through them all with him. They worked out which one was the best so they arranged coverage with that one. In the meantime, the father decided that he’d buy the main shop in the town where this best company was installed and slowly set out the premises, then he could take over the installation of these sites and how tall they were. That way, he’d have a monopoly on the amount of work that was being done in the town on mobile ‘phones.

There was nothing in that dream that seemed to be of any significance or ring any bells with me.

Finally, I’d had a girlfriend. She was a few years younger than me but I liked her anyway and she liked me, which was the important thing. We hung around for a while, nothing particularly seriously, One day she’d been round to my house but my mother said that she’d have to go. I saw her to the door but told her to come back in half an hour. Half an hour later she was there on the doorstep and I smuggled her into the house. I had to leave her for a minute while I went to the bathroom, and she decided that she needed to go too. She went into the bathroom and I closed the door and waited outside. My mother had heard the toilet flush from the previous time so she came upstairs to use the bathroom, walked in and found this girl in there. Naturally, she was quite upset and it led to something of an argument but by the time that the three of us were walking downstairs again my mother had calmed down a little. I think that she’d started to accept by this time that this girl was going to be somewhere around in the future. I remember saying to this girl as we were walking down the stairs “you can’t say that life going out with me isn’t exciting, can you?”.

This house – it was the one in Shavington that we left when I was 16. I can see it quite clearly. I can still see the girl too. She was short, small-framed and with dark curly hair down just past her shoulders. I was convinced that I knew who she was too, but now that I’m awake … "really?" – ed … I can’t recognise her at all.

But finally “getting the girl” and overwhelming my mother? Things are surely beginning to look up. I just wish that I knew who the girl was.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t hang about. It’s her last day so I imagine that she has plenty of blood samples and injections to perform, seeing as her oppo starts his round tomorrow.

After she left I made breakfast and then sat down to eat it, with a good book on the laptop.

At long last, we’ve finished Geo T Clark’s MEDIEVAL MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND and I can’t say that I was disappointed. It ended up going out like a damp squib which is not surprising.

And having yesterday mocked somewhat the author of a book dated 1840, the next reading matter to come round on the book list was printed in 1604.

It’s called THE SURVEY OF LONDON and it’s a guide book discussing the different localities of London as they were at the end of the Fifteenth Century, with a few anecdotal notes about things that our author, John Stowe, picked up while he was researching.

It’s a book that’s been on my reading list for ages. Liz (“this” Liz, not “that” Liz) and I spent days wandering around London in between University meetings twenty years ago, visiting all kinds of hidden corners.

London has changed considerably since the slum clearances that began at the end of the Nineteenth Century and the Luftwaffe bombing, so I’m hoping to find a collection of books that describe how it used to be. I’ve found a few from the early Twentieth Century but they are in the period where the modernisation of the City was in full swing, and a lot had gone already by them.

What I’m hoping is that this book will fill the gap.

After breakfast I came back in here to start work. And today’s task was the Welsh homework, which is now finished, although God knows what it will be like. I’m really struggling to concentrate these days.

My cleaner turned up bang on time to fit my patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

When I rang up to enquire after it, I was told that the dialysis centre had changed my hours. That was the first that I had heard of it.

The taxi already had a passenger aboard when it arrived, and once I was in, we set off.

At the dialysis centre I was seen quite quickly. They confirmed that my hours had changed but they didn’t believe me when I told them that I knew nothing about it. That rather annoyed me.

No-one bothered me all afternoon, which was a good thing. However, I didn’t do very much. I wasn’t in the mood.

The same passenger was with me on the return journey so the driver dropped him off first. It took about fifteen minutes to take him to his room at the Re-education Centre so it was about 19:15 when I made it back home. And I’ve no idea why, but I found myself in a foul mood.

Back in my lair, I crashed into a chair and vegetated for an hour. I was exhausted. Tea was a simple pasta and burger and now I’m off to bed, totally wasted.

But seeing as we have been talking about historical novels … "well, one of us has" – ed … a book written in 1604 will be full of obsolete phrase and spelling.
That’s no surprise though, because the English language was in a state of confusion, consolidation and correction round about that time.
As Kenneth Williams once famously said "but English is a very peculiar language"
And as Sid James famously replied "you interrupt me once more and you’ll hear some VERY peculiar language"

Monday 2nd June 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

… debacle this afternoon was. Almost anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and I ended up being one extremely tired, unhappy bunny.

You are probably thinking that I seem to dwell on the depressing side of life, but that seems to be all that’s happening right now. The solution to this would have been, in the past, to changer les idées as they say around here, but how do I do that when I can’t go anywhere or do anything?

Last night was another one of those nights where I seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and what should have been an early night ended up being much later than intended. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything right now and it’s driving me berserk.

When I finally made it into bed though, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until … errr … 05:50. It took me a few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing just how few I seem to have these days, and then, in a magnificent fit of enthusiasm, I dictated the radio notes for the eleventh track of the radio programme that I was organising yesterday.

Having done that, I wandered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and make myself look pretty in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And in the kitchen, as well as the medication, I cut the bread that I’d baked yesterday and put half of it into the freezer.

After the medicine I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to discover that there was actually something on there from the previous night when I was convinced that I hadn’t been anywhere at all.

First task therefore was to transcribe those notes and add them in to that day’s entry. If you’re interested, you’ll have to go back and have a look.

Having done that, I could turn my attention to last night’s notes. There was a girl I knew who had been staying as some kind of paying guest at a house somewhere in the countryside. She’d taken with her some of her urban habits to which they were not particularly accustomed. On one occasion she had to go to try to find a job somewhere. She went for an interview of which she seemed to take control, and when she returned, she told the owner of the house all about it. She told me later that she was horrified that she’d been behaving like that because it was not the kind of behaviour to which he was accustomed, although of course she and I had a joke about it and a laugh. After staying there, she came back to live in temporary accommodation in the town again where she could pick up with her usual habits and way of life, and not be out there on a limb in such an extraordinary position.

This reminds me of a girl whom I used to know in Brussels. She was a free-lance worker for one of these NGOs and her work was interesting, but irregular. On one occasion she had no money to pay her mortgage so I agreed that she could come to stay with me for twelve months and let out her place to a tenant on a short let in order to catch up with her arrears of mortgage.

She would have been the type to have taken control of an interview, and she was also the type who seemed to do nothing but complain about how far out of town my apartment was. I did offer to push it closer to the city centre for her but the humour went right over her head. After she left, she didn’t speak to me after that and I’m still waiting for her to make some kind of “gesture” towards the accommodation. Not that I was expecting any but a gesture would have been nice.

The nurse turned up and organised my legs, with more of the banal talk that gets on my nerves. Luckily it’s Isabelle the Nurse for a week starting tomorrow, which will cheer me up.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re now on a whistle-stop tour of various castles as we dash towards the end, not hanging around long in any of them. Our author seems to be losing his interest in them, judging by the lack of clear description, and I can’t say that I blame him.

He tells us on page 490 that for Taunton Castle, "The inner court is further subdivided into two parts, of which the eastern half seems to have been raised into a sort of platform upon which probably Ine’s actual residence was placed.".

Just a handful of lines further down he tells us that "The walled part is roughly triangular, the base being the east side, arid the truncated part open to the west. This area seems further to have been divided by a cross wall into two parts, the keep, hall, and gatehouse being in the western, and in the eastern, the earthworks, which favours the notion of this having been the old English citadel.", totally forgetting that he mentioned that just a few lines previously.

On page 498, with regard to Tickhill Castle, he tells us that "The outer front of the first floor is ornamented with four stiff rude pediments". I don’t know about you, but my imagination is working overtime.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and finally finished the outstanding unit ready to send off. I also reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and sent it off. It’s a concert that came from Germany in 1982 and it’s certainly interesting.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and sorted out my patches, and then I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. And waited.

It was 13:11 when it finally turned up and I was not in a very good humour. We arrived at Avranches at 14:00 and it was, would you believe, 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had vowed to “have a discussion” with them about this fiasco of changing the dates, and so regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, knowing my luck, it would have to be Emilie The Cute Consultant on duty today.

She explained basically that it was only an idea, apparently not understanding that it’s the kind of decision that involves not just me but half the town as everyone else has to shunt their appointments around. She definitely doesn’t love me any more now.

No-one else bothered me at all. They were far too busy organising a new visitor who was not co-operating with them. I tried to revise my Welsh but I couldn’t keep going and drifted off into oblivion, to be shaken awake by the little student who told me that things were finished.

Nevertheless, they took their time sorting me out and the little student drew the short straw so uncoupling me took longer than it should. Weary and exhausted, it was 18:50 when I finally staggered out to the taxi and it was 19:35 when I finally sat down in my apartment.

And so I’m just about done for the day. It’s an afternoon that I would like to forget, and the quicker the better too.

Right now I’m off to bed where I would like to sleep for a hundred years but I’m up early tomorrow to go to Paris. I am not looking at all forward to this trip. Not in the least. But before I go to bed, I’d better check on my stiff, rude pediment and make sure that it’s OK.

But this idea of moving my apartment towards the city centre reminds me of the American tourist who staggered into a pub in Dent and asked the landlord "why did they build the railway station so far from the town?" (it’s three miles away).
After thinking for a moment, the landlord replied "they probably thought that it was a good idea to build it at the side of the railway line."

Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

… at the dialysis centre today.

Well, not exactly. Whatever they did there seemed to be okay, but it was almost everything else that was associated with it that all seemed to go pear-shaped. The fates really do seem to be conspiring against me right now.

And not only that, but the stabbing pain in my foot that died down earlier this morning is now back, and with a vengeance too and it’s really stressing me out that I can’t seem this time to shake it off.

It seemed to begin to quieten down late last night which was just as well because I managed to find my way into bed at something like a reasonable time. Not before 23:00, it has to be said, but not all that far off. I was asleep quite quickly too and I remember nothing at all about the night until all of … errr … 05:40.

Even worse, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and when the electric water heater switched off I was already in the bathroom having a wash, a shave and a wash of the undies.

After the medication I came back in here for a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was down in the town during the night, having a wander around in the evening. It was a cool, dry night and there was a guy down there busking, playing the guitar and he had a friend with him. The guitarist was quite simple but quite good. I had the idea that maybe why didn’t I bring my guitar and I could do one morning on one street corner and another morning on another street corner and move around as much as I possibly could to play at different places. I walked down past where the new War Memorial is and came eventually to a restaurant. This was a well-known restaurant for being very close to its hours and not serving very close to closing time. I looked in and it wasn’t as crowded as it might have been so I walked through and walked out of the back door onto the car park. But the back door didn’t lead onto the car park. It led into another type of café that was facing the sea. It was pitch-black in there but there were still people. I heard the voice of the woman who owned it asking “did someone call me?”. Another voice from the far corner replied “yes, we were trying to order a pizza”. The woman answered “yes, but give me five minutes and I’ll organise it for you”. I thought that that was quite strange because normally, if you went in there shortly before closing time, they would refuse to serve you. In any case, I didn’t recall this room at the rear at all. I used to walk through there and out of the door at the back and find myself on the car park.

Believe it or not, I know where this restaurant is but I just can’t place it. And the back door does lead out into a little square or car park where there’s a quayside across the way. But there’s a story about a restaurant where Nerina and I went once (only once) where they refused to serve even though we were there ten minutes before “last meals”. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had similar problems once IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Another thing that I did was to fill in the forms from that electrician and pack it in an envelope with a cheque on part-account for my cleaner to post. I may as well sign him up and set him to work so that at least something will be done fairly soon.

Isabelle the Nurse was in chat mode today but she didn’t stay long all the same. And I still didn’t manage to see her photos of Copenhagen.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Richard’s Castle and we’ve now moved on to Rochester. There would usually be a lot to say about Rochester Castle, but it remains to be seen if our author is going to say very much about it.

So far, he’s admiring the civilian architecture of the place, having noted that "the architrave has a bold chevron moulding." and that "the north loop, which opened into the bridge-pit of the main entrance, has been converted into a rude doorway,". How I would have loved to have seen that and to find out what it was doing.

Back in here I made a start on my Welsh homework and by the time that my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches I’d done about two-thirds of it. It’s not due for another couple of weeks but I want to push on ahead if I can.

After my cleaner left, I cut up my ginger cake and put it away. And if the crumbs taste anything like as good as the cake does, it will be wonderful.

However, even though I had the cake as low down in the oven as I possibly could, I ended up with a hard crust on the top and the base is slightly undercooked. I can’t wait to have a decent oven and try some proper baking with proper facilities instead of trying to make do with a very unsatisfactory tabletop oven.

The taxi was late again – except that it wasn’t. It should have been here at 12:30 but it turned up at 13:05 with another passenger, well within the 45-minute Social Security guideline for combining passengers.

It was my favourite driver too and so we arrived at 13:28 which is some good going. I didn’t have to wait long to be connected up either.

No-one bothered me this afternoon but with the pan returning to my foot I didn’t feel like working too much. It’s difficult to concentrate at these moments.

After I was unplugged and weighed I found my taxi already waiting, with another passenger on board. He wasn’t going far and when we arrived at his residence, one of the assistants asked "where’s his wheelchair?"

How could it be possible for someone to forget his wheelchair? It beats me, especially as we had to go all the way back for it and drop it off on our way past again. Therefore it was once more late when I returned home, in agony with my foot and totally exhausted.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with the last of the chocolate cake, so ginger cake tomorrow for tea if I feel like it which, right now is debatable. I’m going to try to go to bed but this pain in my foot is driving me berserk.

And seeing as we are talking about pains driving us berserk … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that famous incident when Brian Close, fielding in close to the wicket was hit by a vicious drive from an Australian batsman
The other players dashed around him. "Does it hurt, Brian?" asked one of them
"Of course it hurts" he replied. "It always hurts when you tell a bowler to ‘pitch it up’ and he totally ignores you."

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

… that I have a sense of humour meltdown, but today has been one of those days, right enough. Nothing that I have done seems to have gone as it should.

Last night’s activities set the scene somewhat for today’s disasters. What with the football and everything, I ended up being really late going to bed when I could really have done with going to bed early.

Once in bed though, I can’t remember all that much. I have the vaguest memory of waking up, noticing that it was still dark and so going beck to sleep pretty much straight away.

Be that as it may, I awoke at 06:40, 20 minutes before the alarm and when the alarm finally did ring, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. Not as early as some, but an early start all the same.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a public ward in a hospital after an operation on my leg. I found it really difficult if not impossible to walk around at the moment but being in this ward with all these other people made me realise just how healthy I was. It was probably the best reason that I could think of for actually leaving the bed but it was so painful trying to move. There were examples being shown on the television of other people who had had this kind of operation to their leg, mostly foreigners, people from abroad. It was interesting to spot their places where they were actually going to fit into this hospital regime as far as needing help and lack of autonomy went. They would be cruising so many hours of their own private life for so many hours per day on dialysis and was it worth it?

If you want to know my opinion about this, read on. But once more, I was dismayed that I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about medical issues.

Later on, my brother was talking to a girl from his class whom I recognised and to whom I used to chat occasionally. When they finished I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was at Manchester University. I took hold of her and pulled her so that she sat down on the edge of my bed and asked her what she was studying. She said, with a strange look on her face, “geography”. I asked how she meant. She replied “different parts of Europe and Dalmatia – I moved my bath the other day and there they were, all of them on the floor. I was horrified”. I said “had I known, I would have let you come and share my bed”. We had something of a laugh, a joke and a flirt around. I thought to myself “this is yet another good chance of actually trying to build on something, some kind of relationship for the immediate future”.

Even now, I can still see this girl. I’ve no idea who she is but in the dream I knew that I knew her. She was wearing a red and white gingham school dress too, so what she was doing at University I really don’t know. However, there is some kind of undercurrent to this story but the World isn’t ready to hear it. And what a shame that the dream finished when it did.

There was something going on with a Native American tribe in North America of which I was a member. I was there, I suppose, because I respected the people, liked them, liked their culture. A group of Native Americans from outside my group were not content with everything and were trying to incite my group of Native Americans into rising up and rebelling whereas our opinion was that rising up and rebelling is OK in books and folk songs but it’s much more complicated than that. In the end the situation became so severe that those from outside our group were expelled from the tribe. There was talk that I would be expelled too because my position was seen as being something of an anomaly and I was being seen as a position of suspicion by some people from within the group.

What immediately came into my mind when I was typing out these notes was my visit in 2019 to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site where the US Army massacred what was left of the Lakota Sioux people, where I went for a walk around the site of the slaughter and visited the mass grave of the victims.

This is what the author of “The Wizard of Oz” had to say at the time about Wounded Knee "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth".

Nothing has changed in the USA.

The nurse had very little to say for himself, which suited me fine. He was soon in and gone and I could carry on with making breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’re pushing on with our visits, dashing from one site to another in some kind of indecent haste. We’ve been to the castle at Oswestry, such as it is, and then back across the dyke into Wales for a couple more places. We’re pushing on at quite a rate and there can’t be all that many places left to visit.

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and then I had an electrician to see.

Not that I know an awful lot about electricity – I do it all by trial and error – but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a disgraceful estimate. To supply and fit a new power board (that isn’t necessary) that costs €199:00 at Brico Depot, he’s quoted €2,000. For changing eight double sockets for multiples and wiring up the oven, microwave and hob, he wants another €2,000.

What beat me though was that he had the quote back here in less than the time that it would have taken to go back home to type it, and he rang me up thirty seconds after the quote arrived, to tell me to sign it and return it quickly. I’m not sure from which tree he thinks that I fell, but I feel really sorry for any elderly person who comes across him.

Next task was to finish my Welsh homework, which is now ready for a final check tomorrow morning before I send it off for marking.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait, and wait, and wait. Round about 13:00 I ‘phoned them up to enquire and was told that "he’s running a little late."

These new Sécurité Social regulations allow a 45-minute window in order for the vehicles to carry multiple passengers, and when my vehicle did turn up, 44 minutes late, it already had one passenger in it.

The driver and the other passenger chatted like long-lost buddies so I relaxed and enjoyed the view, knowing full well that by the time I arrive, my anaesthetic will have worn off.

As I was leaving the car, my telephone fell out into the footwell, as I found out later when the driver brought it back. And an envelope in my pocket with a prescription for a blood test became dislodged and I won’t tell you where it fell, because you are probably eating your tea right now.

There was a new patient today and all of the nurses were congregating around him, sorting him out. It was 14:20, 50 minutes late, when I was finally plugged in. painful yet again

There were plenty of things for me to do, right up to the moment when the needle ceased to work and my arm began to swell up. By that time though, the new patient was having a crisis and the entire medical staff, doctors and nurses, were congregating around him so I had to wait.

When the crisis began, my nurse was standing by me bed, dealing with an infusion. When the alarm sounded, she dropped the infusion pouch – right onto my leg where the wound is.

Later on, moving the table with my computer, she banged the wound yet again.

Everyone finished at the same time today but while most of the staff were dealing with this emergency, there was just one nurse unplugging everyone. So guess who was last?

By the time that I made it back home it was 19:20 and I was thoroughly fed up with everything. So in answer to the question that was asked during one of my dreams, it’s certainly not worth it

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up with today. Gotthold Lessing once famously said "Better counsel comes overnight " and that is for what I am hoping.

But seeing as we have been talking about transport issues … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not by any means the first that I have had.
Several years ago I was waiting for a train in Canada – the 11:55 from Calgary to Regina – when at 11:42 exactly it pulled into the station.
It’s never happened like that before so I went to express my admiration to the driver.
"It’s not like that at all" he replied
"Why not?" I asked
"Because, if the truth be known, this is the 11:55 train from a week last Tuesday"

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: taxi issues

Thursday 16th April 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

Monday 16th February 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

Monday 15th December 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S NICE …

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

Thursday 2nd October 2025 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

Thursday 7th August 2025 – I AM IN …

Saturday 12th July 2025 – HERE WE GO …

Friday 20th June 2025 – WE NOW HAVE …

Monday 16th June 2025 – I AM WASTED …

Monday 9th June 2025 – THEY HAVE CHANGED …

Monday 2nd June 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

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